As the spokesperson for Germany's Chaos Computer Club (CCC), Andy Müller-Maguhn is changing Deutschlanders' attitudes toward the hacker community by advising the German government on information policy. Last year he warned his country's parliament, the Bundestag, about the dangers of holding ISPs liable for content carried on their networks. The resulting multimedia law exempted providers from outright liability, although they must still take steps to block Web sites known to serve up child pornography or neo-Nazi propaganda.
Since its informal founding in 1981 the CCC has exposed security holes in systems people count on, such as the German post office network – from which the CCC extracted, and promptly returned, DM135,000 (about US$75,000). More recently, the organization has shown how easily the PIN code used in Eurocheque ATMs can be obtained, even as banks have insisted that the cards are secure.
As Deutsche Telekom's monopoly grip on German telephony loosens, and as European Union telecommunications commissioner Martin Bangemann forges policies that will shape Europe's role in the information society, advocates of privacy and free access to information will continue to turn to the CCC for guidance and technical assistance. "In America hackers are perceived as a threat," Müller-Maguhn says. "But here in Germany, we have a more positive view."
This article originally appeared in the April issue of Wired magazine.
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